


you stole from the drug store (you never were sick)

by elle_stone



Series: Cold Creeps Up the Length of My Spine [4]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-30
Updated: 2019-10-30
Packaged: 2021-01-12 23:20:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,065
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21234248
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elle_stone/pseuds/elle_stone
Summary: Raven, recently shipped off to live with her aunt in the Certified Middle of Nowhere, joins her weird new neighbor Murphy on a bike ride to the old, abandoned house out by the swamp.





	you stole from the drug store (you never were sick)

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from "Red Hand" by Owl John, which also partially inspired this fic and which is _also_ a great spooky/October sorta song.

Raven's aunt's house sits in the middle of the Old Reyes Land, a vast tract the exact boundaries of which are no longer known. The house itself is white clapboard, with long strips of exposed gray and brown underneath. Around it, a rank meadow land extends:  nothing but  long grass and weeds , interspersed with a few gnarled and minimal trees. The summer has been warm and wet and  so  the grass and the weeds and the trees, here and on the other side of the road, and down either side of the hill, and around the other scattered houses and even into town, have flourished with a madness that cannot be contained. But now the temperature has dropped, and the sky has shaded from a brilliant blue to an uncertain and cloudy gray, for days now without rainin g. W hen the wind blows it speaks of a raw and chilly season on the way.   


Raven sits on the front porch step, watching the dirt road out in front of the house, especially where it curves slightly downhill to the left. From where she's sitting, she can't see any other houses, although she knows from recent explorations that old rectangular foundations are hidden around the property, down among the grass. That more people lived here once and now they're gone and have left almost no trace. When she was little, she thought her aunt's house was cool and weird; she liked the blue glass orb, on its stone pedestal, that sat out in the front yard, liked to gaze into it and pretend that she was seeing the future, liked to relay fortunes to her mother and her aunt over dinner. She liked climbing up into the straggling branches of the trees and running through the overgrown grass and getting dirty in the mud of the road after it rained. She liked the way the wind blew through the chimes that hang from the porch and the tiny little melodies they made.   


Now she looks around and thinks about the dead foundations and how long it takes to bike into town, and she thinks she's really living in the Middle of Nowhere. But  she’s stuck here, because her mother’s out of the picture, and there’s nowhere else for her to go.   


Dusk hasn't yet settled but the light has already taken on a  dark  blue and uncertain cast when she finally catches sight of Murphy biking up the crest of the hill. They hadn't set a time to meet so she cannot say he is late. Still, she's been sitting out on the porch for a while now, fiddling with her latest little metal creature .  She forms them out of the discarded bodies of old toys, combined with bits of scrap metal and wire, gives them ears and sometimes tails and tiny little arms, for fun, and sees if she can set the gears inside them just right so that, with a bit of prompting, they can walk about on their own. Her aunt has banned them from them the kitchen, dining room, and living room. Luckily, their bedrooms are on opposite sides of the house, so she doesn't hear Raven tinkering with them in the middle of the night, winding them up and letting them roam across her floor.   


She snatches this one up and stores it away in the front pocket of her backpack, slings the bag o ver her shoulder, and stands up. Rolling her bike over the grass is a challenge. By the time she gets to the road, Murphy has already pulled up, parallel to the house, straddling his bike with both feet on the ground and waiting for her.   


"Hey," he says, "ready to go?"   


"Don't I look ready? I've been waiting for an hour."   


"I said 'early evening,' Reyes." He balances his feet on the pedals again , taking a moment to gesture up at the sky . " If you’ve been waiting around, t hat's on you."   


She's still climbing on to her bike as he sets off, but the head start he gives himself is minimal, and she catches up quick. She's not really annoyed. Murphy is the closest thing she has to a neighbor, or a friend; he lives down the hill and one house down, with his father and a mean , old black dog, and, like Raven, he'll be a junior when classes start up at the high school again next week. The Murphy family, Raven's aunt says, has had  a long string  of bad luck: an illness almost killed the son when he was little, and the father spent some time in the county jail. Mother ran off a while ago, too, no one's sure why. Another man, maybe, or just tired of this place.   


Ran off for the same reason Raven's mom did, Raven thinks. Not that she and Murphy have talked about stuff like that much.   


They pedal at a slow pace down the dirt road, and when she thinks he's not looking, she watches his profile, wonders about him in a vague and quiet, drifting way. Most of the other kids in the district live closer to town, he's told her. Still the boonies, he says, but it's different for them. They look out their windows at night and see other windows, the safety of other people. They don't know the loneliness of the dirt road and the tall grass after the sun goes down.   


*   


The Reyes house has faded into the distance behind them by the time they pass the graveyard. As far as Raven knows, no one has been buried here for quite some time. Most of the gravestones, square markers with nearly illegible family names,  or  tilted stone crosses, are chipped and dark with age, and the grass has grown too long, and only a few of the dead  still  have flowers or candles placed atop their graves.    


A spiked black fence separates the  cemetery from the road. The distance between the two is so short that, if she were to reach out her hand,  she would be able to grasp at the rusted metal bars.   


"You ever hear weird noises at night," Murphy says, "this is where they're coming from." He gestures with his chin toward the  graveyard but keeps  his gaze fixed straight ahead.   


Raven makes a face.  He does this a lot: tries to scare her with stories that he’s probably just made up.  "The cemetery," she repeats, deadpan. " Really, Murphy?  Cemeteries, ghosts, strange sounds at night —i sn't that all a little obvious?"   


He shrugs. Glances at her out of the corner of his eye. "Are you saying you don't hear them?" he asks.   


And the question does make her pause, despite herself. She hears t he wind chimes, yeah. Clinking of metal against hollow metal , tiny little notes of half-formed music below her window . Sometimes something else , metallic and hard to pin down. Sometimes a howling sound, distant and mournful, like a high storm wind that is just beginning to whistle, like a warning cut through thin , clear air.   


Murphy keeps a steady pace to her left .  Off t o her right, a rustle of movement beyond the graves. She turns to look, thinks perhaps it was only the wind blowing the tops of the trees.   


When she doesn't answer, Murphy says, "And just so you know, Reyes, I didn't say anything about ghosts."   


She notices the movement again, something slim and faint at the far edge of the headstones . B efore she can take it in, the road curves again and the graveyard falls swiftly out of sight.   


*   


Murphy has just started to tell her the story of how the  Jaha kid died—"This happened when our parents were in school," he says, "people still think the  Murphies were involved but we weren't"—when Raven skids to a halt in the middle of the path. The light has all but faded by now, the sky a deepening blue and the trees and vegetation a shadowy black against it, and they've long passed the few remaining , thinly placed, houses on the road . On either side of them now is nothing but grass growing out of control , deep-green trees and bushes crowding up against the edges of the road.   


And there to her right, something shadowy and large and out of place, looming , half-hidden by  the tall grass.   


Murphy stops a few paces ahead of her and looks back over his shoulder. "What the fuck, Reyes?" he snaps. From the strangled sound of h is voice, she knows his heart must be beating out of rhythm too.   


She isn't looking at him, though. She's taking in the shadow-shape, what she sees now is an old, abandoned truck, parked with its nose facing out toward the road. She drops her bike and starts wading through the grass toward it.   


"That thing's been here for ages," Murphy tells her, pitching his voice loud as he watches her from the path. He shoves down the kickstand for his bike with his heel, dismounts but doesn't come any closer — like he’s still gauging her interest, trying to understand the determined set of her face.    


"Whose is it?" she calls back. The truck is old but not that old, not rusted, not scrap; it has all four wheels and when she pulls at the driver's side door, it opens with only a small, low,  creaking sound. "And why would someone just — leave it here?"   


She glances back over her shoulder just in time to catch Murphy shrug. He kicks his feet through the grass, hands in his pockets as he follows her, accepting the detour now for what it is. "Ran out of gas?" he guesses. "Broke down?"   


"So why not come back for it?"   


No answer t here. N ot that she was expecting one.   


Raven climbs up and into the driver's seat, testing out the feel of the steering wheel in her hands. She's always wanted a truck like this. "You know, I could probably get it working again."   


"Grand theft auto: dirt road edition," Murphy deadpans. He's up in the passenger seat now, clicking open the glove compartment and rifling his way through. "Ambitious, Reyes."   


"Not like anyone else is using it." She taps her foot against the gas pedal . She pretends for just a moment that she’s driving away .   


Next to her, Murphy grabs a folding knife , a lighter,  and a handful of coins and hides them away in his pocket.   


"Or I could just take it apart," Raven adds.   


"The whole thing?"   


"Whole fucking thing. Sell it for  junk. Use the parts for something else ."   


She leans back in the driver's seat. They've left the doors open, and the thick, humid air presses in . T he sounds of cricket song build up through the silence.   


"Seems like a waste of a good getaway vehicle," Murphy says, and turns his head lazily to the side to look at her.   


*   


Raven thinks about the truck for a long time after, as the last of the sun s inks behind the trees , the deep blue of the sky seeping at last into black, and the  insect hum grows louder in the wild grass . Maybe whoever owned it was trying to run away. Maybe she left it behind on purpose, abandoned it, like the last of her identity . J ust let it go.   


The road slopes down, and down, then curves again, and runs out into grass just ahead of the burned-out shell of a house. From this distance, in the dark, it's hard to tell that the vague shadow is only a ruin. Murphy has to take his flashlight out of his pocket and shine it into the hollow for Raven to get the full picture: the skeleton still standing, but the outer walls scorched and black; the roof partially caved in. No glass in the windows. Through the jagged holes of its face, hints of inscrutable black charred remains within .   


They leave their bikes on the path. Raven grabs her own flashlight out of her bag, and the two beams of light guide them as they cross the weed-thick yard toward the house.   


Raven plays her flashlight beam over the front steps, which have rotted straight through, over the unsteady porch. She's trying to figure out some way to tell Murphy that she's not risking those stairs for anything, without sounding chicken, but he’s already leading her  off to the side,  along a path of mossy bricks. Out here in the wilderness, it still feels like summer: the air wet and warm and sticking to her skin . When Raven breathes in, she tastes the dampness of it in her lungs, and when she closes her eyes, she hears a cacophony of bugs, punctuated by the croaking of frogs, the hum of flies.   


Behind the house, the ground slopes down toward a low, jagged lake, or swampland, dark green with slime and loud with frog-calls.   


She sweeps her  light across the lake, up and over the burned out remains of the house. "What is this place?" she asks. She means the question to come out brave and loud, slashing through the thick air and the swamp-sounds, but her voice is hushed.    


The back porch is an ugly but  solid slab of dark cement; she walks over and perches on the edge of it, her backpack next to her and her flashlight on her lap. When she speaks again, her words  sound confident and sturdy , as she'd wanted them to be. "Why did you want to come out here?"   


"Because, Reyes," Murphy answers, "this is the end of the trail. The last remnant of civilization in these parts." He hands her his flashlight, beam pointed out, so that he's caught in two overlapping spotlights as he spreads his arms out wide. "You've reached the end of the earth. This is it."   


Raven smiles. An inexplicable fondness, pleasant and warm, is welling up in her chest. Here she is, at the outer reaches, hanging out with this total weirdo. He’s half-grinning at her as he  stands in the center of  his own misshapen shadows, and the deep night  enfolds  them both.    


She leans back on her hands and  tilts up her chin. “ All right, but what's the story, though? What happened out here? How'd this place burn down? ” And before he can answer: “ Let me guess — unstable  sibling killed the whole family, then set the house on fire. Now it's haunted. Full of ghosts."   


Murphy raises his eyebrows. "Full of ghosts," he repeats. "Maybe. No more than anywhere else, though." He's taken  the lighter out of his pocket and started playing with it, flipping it open and closed. "No one knows what happened to the house. It's been like this for so long—" He shrugs. "Everyone just forgot. Weirdly enough, cause there are some families who've been living out here a long time."   


"Like yours."   


He gestures  toward her  with the lighter  flame . "And yours."   


The cement floor of the porch is cold and jagged beneath her palms, and an uncertain feeling is crawling across her skin.    


The Old Reyes Land. The stripped-paint house that has outlived all its neighbors.   


Full of ghosts .    


But no more than anywhere else. And it’s not the ghosts you have to worry about.   


"There's one popular story, though," Murphy ’s saying. He flicks the lighter open again, holds the flame steady in front of him. Shadows and light bringing out the starkest features of his face. "That the woman who lived here burned it down herself. Some people say she was inside when she did it. Others that she watched it burn and then fled." He walks a few steps closer, lazy and slow through the thick, muddy dirt. "I guess the pessimists believe one story, the optimists the other."   


"Why'd she do it, though?" Raven asks. She sits up straighter, leaning in toward him with her arms crossed over the flashlights in her lap. "Why not just leave?"   


Murphy shrugs. "Don't know. I understand the impulse, though." He sits down next to her, close, his leg up against her leg and the lighter still burning a steady, shifting flame in his hand. He watches the flame, and she watches his face. "Maybe she was just — fa s cinated by fire. Maybe she needed to feel powerful."   


"Maybe you're both pyromaniacs." She bumps her knee against his knee and he flicks his gaze up. In the last bit of light, before he thumbs the lighter closed again and the flame goes out, she thinks he looks confused . U ncertain, perhaps,  as to  how they got this close.   


Then he leans in closer.   


"Maybe. Maybe she found it thrilling. I can relate to that, you know, Reyes. Starting something destructive and wild, but small. Watching it grow—”   


Raven's hand r eac h es out blindly , her fingers curling, slowly, in the front of his shirt.   


“Knowing it’ll grow beyond you. That you won’t be able to control it anymore. You ever thought about the thrill of that,  Reyes ?”   


His voice, low and hypnotic  and thrilling,  too, and Raven's hand closing into a fist, tugging him toward her—   


S he wonders if his eyes are closing, too—   


She shifts, and one of the flashlights falls from her lap onto the ground, and half their shallow light blinks out.   


Murphy's on his feet, clearing his throat .  Raven's head feels thick and crowded with unknowable thoughts , her eyes closed tight as she regains herself . Murphy picks up the flashlight and thumps it with his hand until the beam flickers to life again.   


"None of that was a confession, ” he says, fast and too loud, “ you know, just — "   


"Right." She doesn't know what to do with her hands. She starts to fidget with her backpack, pawing around inside it blindly until she's found the little creature that she stashed  in the pocket . "I will not suspect you in the next local arson."   


"What the fuck is that, anyway?" He gestures with the flashlight beam toward the makeshift toy in Raven's hand.    


She tilts her head and glances down at it. "I like to think of it as a mouse," she answers. "Because of the ears." Wide, round, wire ears — she slides her fingertip along the edge of one, with care — attached to a round metal head , with a slightly pointed nose. The body is wooden, also round, and on the bottom are attached four tiny wheels, repurposed from a couple of old toy cars.    


"It doesn't look like a mouse to me."   


"Shut up."   


She holds the little toy up into the light, and carefully starts to wind it up, cranking the small , discreet  key in its side. "It can walk all the way across the room. All on its own."   


"Downright spooky," Murphy answers, dull, and Raven shoots him a dagger look.   


"I bet you that I can make it walk all the way into the house," she says, as she sets it down on the concrete floor, pointed directly toward the dark, open mouth of the doorway. The door itself is long gone, though the rusted hinges glint in the full light of the flashlight beam.   


"Yeah, and if it does make it in, who's going to go after it?"   


"If it does, then I win, so — you." She flashes him a wicked grin over her shoulder.   


One more creaking rotation of the key, and Raven lets her haphazard creature go. It starts to roll forward, its movements clunky, but unceasing, closer and closer to the shadowy inside of the house. Raven smiles, pleased with her handiwork.   


But when she looks up at Murphy, she sees that he's tilted his head back, that he's looking not at the little mouse she made but at something on the second story of the house. His mouth is open.   


And she's annoyed, truly . B ut underneath, and growing, she's wary and ill at ease.   


She stands up slowly, slings her backpack over her shoulder, grips her flashlight with her other hand. Behind her, the creaky sounds of the mouse treading across concrete disrupt the crickets and the flies and the frogs.    


"Murphy...? What are you — ?"   


"That." He points upward with his free hand, and Raven steps backward and looks up.   


On the second floor of the  burned-out house, a light is blazing : a flickering fire of orange and red behind the window frame .   


"I'm pretty sure we shouldn't be seeing that," Murphy mumbles, and Raven grabs his hand and  starts to pull.   


"I think ,” she hisses back over her shoulder, “ we should be getting the  _ fuck _ out."   


*   


They both drop their flashlights somewhere between the backyard and the path, the grass catching at their ankles and their legs as they run. They cycle back down the road so fast that Raven's lungs start to burn and her palms to sweat. The lights attached to the front of their bikes cast a narrow, eerie glow ahead of them, and around and behind them and far out in front, only darkness and shadows and the sense of distant movement, narrow and slight, hidden among the endless vegetation and grass. She keeps thinking about fire, the flames shaking, flickering, rising, the pulsing heat of it, the uncontrollable vengeance of it. And then, when they pass the abandoned truck again, of escape, of taking the road all the way into town, off the dirt and onto the pavement and beyond, of her foot on the gas pedal, of driving until the road runs out. As if the ends of the earth will ever look like anything  but this.   


*   


When they reach the Reyes house, they collapse, bent over and catching their breaths ,  their bikes left in the dirt, their front wheels spinning. Raven manages to stand upright first. She has the heel of her hand pressed hard to the space between her lungs, and she's gulping in deep breaths of night air, which is cooler here, and clearer, and easier to breathe.   


Murphy , still shaky and pale, straightens up and wipes the sweat from his brow. "Fuck," he whispers. She can tell that he doesn't quite want to  meet her eye .   


"Yeah," she echoes. "Fuck."   


Then she takes an unsteady step toward him, grabs him by the shirt with both hands, and kisses him, rough and breathless and without grace. After a moment's stunned surprise, he kisses back. She doesn't let him go for a long time.   


"What was — "   


"You okay to go home?"   


She flicks her gaze across his face. Her own expression, she knows, is impassive, unreadable, except for the nervous, unsteady tick of her  eyes and the hard set of her mouth, like a dare.   


The corner of Murphy's mouth quirks up. "You don't have to try this hard to get me to spend the night,  you know ."   


"Funny." She drops her hands to her sides. Without meaning to, she has stepped back, or maybe he has, and the space between them seems too wide now , too cold. She crosses her arms, uncrosses them again. " So, a re you? Okay? "   


"Yeah." The hint of grin has faded from his face . W hat's left is something soft . U ncertain, but soft. "I'll be all right."   


He picks up his bike again, rolling it along by the handlebars. He's facing the wrong way, she thinks, with the faintness of a memory that floats up before sleep. Then he's leaning in close again, his hand on her cheek, and kissing her one last time, with a patience and a s low  restraint that makes her knees feel weak.   


She stands on the path and watches him as he turns his bike around again, mounts it, and pedals slowly away and out of sight.   


*   


Raven wakes early the next morning, just as the pre-dawn sky is shading from black to gray. She is unnerved by the quiet,  and  by a sense that , just before, while she was sleeping, something was creeping along through the grass. Her room is too cold. And when she turns toward the window next to her bed, she sees that it is open, and the curtain is fluttering gently in over the sill. Sitting on the sill and facing her is her monstrous little creature, its head slightly tilted, its round ears poised to hear everything she herself cannot perceive.   


**Author's Note:**

> Forgot to mention, this story has a moodboard on my tumblr, [@kinetic-elaboration](https://kinetic-elaboration.tumblr.com/post/188690708015/you-stole-from-the-drugstore-you-never-were-sick).


End file.
